In San Diego, Big Public Projects Mean Big Delays

Every city agonizes over big civic building projects. But this sunny metropolis has perfected the art of government by indecision, litigation and political risk aversion.

Just ask Larry Lucchino, president and co-owner of the San Diego Padres. He’s still puzzling over how differently the game of politics is played in his adopted San Diego than in his native Pittsburgh.

In recent years, he notes, voters in both Pittsburgh and San Diego have been asked to approve spending tax money to build “intimate” downtown ballparks to keep their professional baseball franchises from leaving town.

Pittsburgh voters said no, resoundingly. The normally penny-pinching San Diego voters said yes, with 60% voting in favor.

Strangely enough, construction on a new park for the Pirates is in full swing, but San Diego’s ballpark project is in limbo--neither truly stalled nor truly advancing, with enough money to do some demolition and lot-clearing but not enough yet to build a venue for superstar Tony Gwynn and his teammates.

“Compared to Camden Yards,” said Lucchino, who was an executive with the Baltimore Orioles when that ballpark was built in 1992, “the San Diego ballpark and redevelopment project has been more difficult by a factor of 10, maybe 20. . . . In terms of baseball and redevelopment, [San Diego] is longer and harder than other places in Western civilization.”

Longtime civic activists, even those who support the ballpark project, have trouble stifling a chuckle at Lucchino’s lament.

“Welcome to San Diego, Mr. Lucchino,” said lawyer Mike McDade, a key advisor to one former mayor--Pete Wilson--and chief of staff to a second, Roger Hedgecock.

Successes in Other Cities

Truth be told, San Diego has a list of successes that make it the envy of many cities: a cost-effective trolley system, downtown housing, a revitalized entertainment zone known as the Gaslamp Quarter, and burgeoning private investment in proposed hotels.

But the city moves with glacial sluggishness on big-ticket public projects. Officials here find it galling that cities they regard as inferior succeed where San Diego fails.

“Why can Phoenix build a city hall, a downtown library, a sports arena and a ballpark and add an additional runway to the airport, and San Diego can’t?” asked an exasperated Peter Q. Davis, a banker and unsuccessful mayoral candidate. “It’s just too popular in San Diego to be negative, particularly if you’re a politician.”

San Diego’s reputation for fussing and fighting has gotten so bad that a movement has sprung up in the Legislature to consolidate government power in San Diego County so important decisions can be made.

A bill sponsored by state Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon) that passed the Assembly late last month would merge several local agencies dealing with transportation, air pollution and waterfront issues.

For three decades the city has debated where to locate a replacement for Lindbergh Field, its landlocked airport. No decision is in sight.

For about that long there has been debate over where to build a replacement for a central library that is considered a civic embarrassment. Last week the council voted 6 to 3 to select a site near the proposed ballpark, reversing a 1995 decision favoring a different site.

Mayor Susan Golding noted that one of her first assignments in 1979 when then-Mayor Wilson appointed her to the Library Commission was to help build a new downtown library.

Still, the issue is far from settled, with questions about financing and design yet to be decided by the council. Both mayoral contenders in the November election have reservations about a downtown library.

It took two elections to get voter approval for a downtown convention center. Even then, anti-taxation lawsuits by Libertarians held up expansion for more than two years, costing the city dozens of lost conventions and hundreds of millions of dollars.

If there were a litigation Hall of Fame, the San Diego ballpark project would have a special wing. The project has engendered 11 lawsuits accusing the city of misusing its hotel-motel tax fund, hiding information from voters, changing the project without voter approval, and proceeding before an environmental review was done. The city and Padres have prevailed at the trial-court level in all of the suits.

But the litigation severely undercut public support--prompting Major League Baseball to launch a public relations blitz.

With lawsuits coming quicker than split-finger fastballs, the city’s bond counsel has been nervous about recommending that the council approve the issuance of $299 million in bonds to finance the city’s share of the project. (The Padres are paying 30%, the city 70%.)

Without bond money, which was authorized by voters in 1998, the project will run out of cash in July and be forced to shut down.

Lucchino has asked the council to advance the team about $20 million to keep construction going. But that could start the political equivalent of a bench-clearing brawl, with opponents rushing back to the courthouse and reheating their efforts to repeal the ballot measure.

Part of the problem lies in the political structure of the state’s second-largest city. By design, power is splintered, starting with a mayor who has less statutory authority than virtually any big-city counterpart in the United States.

In the argot of the real estate industry, San Diego seems to lack closers, from either the public or the private sector.

When voters in Pittsburgh turned down a ballpark in March 1997, a regional sales-tax board and the Legislature swooped in and saved the project. The park is set to debut on opening day 2001.

“For most of its history, San Diego’s been short on an important civic commodity: advocacy,” concluded urbanologists Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson in their recent study of San Diego, past and future.

Locals offer various reasons for the snail’s pace of San Diego’s civic effort:

* Money. “We’re cheap,” said former city planner Mike Stepner. “We pride ourselves at not spending money on things that would be cheap at twice the price.”

* Lawsuit mania. “Anybody with a few dollars and a law degree can slow down a San Diego project,” said Paul Grasso, a top aide to two council members and now vice president of a local job-training group.

* Small-town thinking. “Most San Diegans have historically been very ambivalent about urban living,” said transportation and urban-planning consultant Alan Hoffman, noting that many San Diegans trace their roots to the rural Midwest or South.

* Reluctance to compromise. “San Diego has a very hard time reconciling conflicting interests and deciding on a common goal,” said McDade. “The San Diego attitude seems to be: Let’s have a fistfight on every issue in the public arena.”

Some say this go-slow, keep-it-cheap, pull-back-if-there-is-opposition philosophy is just fine with most San Diegans.

“It’s just the way it works in San Diego,” said Tim McClain, editor of San Diego Metropolitan magazine. “I can’t think of a major project that hasn’t suffered delays. San Diegans are nervous with bold visions.”

In a place where the official nickname is America’s Finest City, smugness is also a factor. “San Diegans believe they live in paradise, and they’re deeply distrustful of anyone or anything that would bring change,” said former journalist and mayoral aide John Freeman.

The specter of the boogeyman metropolis to the north is ever present.

“There is always the fear in San Diego that these major projects will--God forbid--push us toward becoming another Los Angeles,” said Jack McGrory, a former city manager now spearheading the ballpark project for the Padres. “It’s an incredibly painful part of the political culture here.”

1985 Shopping Center Faced Same Hurdles

Boosters--including the mayor, Chamber of Commerce and editorial page of the dominant newspaper--say the project is a wise investment in redeveloping downtown and boosting the region’s economic growth.

Opponents, including a former councilman, an influential newspaper columnist and several downtown property owners, argue that public money should not be used to build a venue for a profit-making concern. They also contend that city services will have to be cut to repay the bonds.

Mayor Golding, in the final months of her final term, remains convinced that the ballpark will be built and will prove to be a catalyst to redeveloping the lagging eastern portion of downtown.

She notes that the most significant public-private redevelopment project in city history, the downtown Horton Plaza shopping center, suffered the same kind of delays, political infighting and controversy about whether the city had signed a bad deal.

When the center opened in 1985, it was an instant financial and architectural success and is largely credited with sparking the downtown renaissance that wowed delegates and media attending the 1996 Republican National Convention here.

In San Diego, where being a leader is akin to trying to herd cats, vision is desirable but persistence is mandatory.

“Persistence means continuing to push forward and not be discouraged by the obstacles,” said Golding.

Those obstacles include allegations of corruption that have never stuck. Last year the county grand jury tried to get Golding booted from office because of alleged back-room dealings involving the ballpark. The district attorney threw out the case, saying the jury was wrong on the facts and wrong on the law.

For all of that, the three-year controversy over the Padres ballpark has had its moments of levity.

When a weekly newspaper tried to link the Padres owners to organized crime figures based on information that other San Diego journalists found flimsy, Lucchino and majority owner John Moores responded by sending the editor a dead fish wrapped in newspaper, with their business cards stuck in its mouth.

The editor asked the FBI to investigate. The FBI, after consulting with federal prosecutors, opted not to pursue the matter.

Even in San Diego, it seems, a dead fish sent to an opponent is protected by the 1st Amendment.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Troubled Projects

Litigation and indecision have plagued major public projects in downtown San Diego, including a new baseball stadium and a proposed central library.

*

* NEW CROP OF HOTELS

Several projects are rising in response to San Diego’s civic center expansion. C1